Plan panel-HRD tussle over private participation in education

NEW DELHI: The Planning Commission and the ministry of human resource development seem to be at odds yet again on the nature of private participation in the education sector.

On Wednesday, deputy chairman Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia met with HRD minister Arjun Singh and ministry officials to discuss the Eleventh Plan document. It would seem that differences on the nature of public-private partnerships (PPP) continue to persist between the two sides. The two sides have agreed to meet again to iron out differences.

The Planning Commission is a strong votary of private participation and PPPs. The ministry, on the other hand is of the view that private participation of the not-for-profit variety is acceptable in certain segments of the sector.

The ministry has on earlier occasions acknowledged that given the expansion plans for higher education, it is not feasible to depend on public funding alone. It has therefore to look to private participation, however this has to hapen within the exisiting framework of the National Policy of Education.

Mr Arjun Singh has also suggested that the private sector join forces to serve backward areas of the country. The Planning Commission favours a revisit of the insistence on restricting private participation to not-for-profit organisations.

Interestingly, the Commission is not limiting private participation to higher education and would like similar partnerships in areas like teacher training as well. Such an insistence seems at odds with ground reality. Especially given the experience with the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).

The ministry had to take the decision to suggest winding up of the NCTE because of the rampant amd indiscriminate privatisation fostered by the Council.

This ideological divergence is not new. During the discussion on the approach paper to the Eleventh Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission had argued that “the role of the private sector in providing high quality education also needs to be recognised and a suitably facilitative environment created to allow such institutions to support our objectives of expanding higher education.”

Coming out in favour of allowing private sector education institutes a free hand to work out their fee structure, the Commission felt that to expect private institutes to charge fees comparable to government aided institutions is wrong as they do not receive funds from the centre or state governments.

The Commission was of the view that the current arrangement on control over private education institution have emerged out of a series of court decisions and may not reflect an adequate appreciation of financial compulsions. Instead it maintains that there was a need to review the system comprehensively to introduce greater clarity and transparency if we want to see a healthy development of quality private sector education.

The minister for human resource development Arjun Singh had expressed his disagreement and reiterated the ministry’s position by referring to past experience. Last year in a letter to the deputy chairman, Mr Singh wrote “Our experience with providing self-financing higher education is not entirely encouraging, forcing even the Supreme Court of India to observe the need for appropiate legislation for regulating fees in order to prevent commercialisation of education.”

The ministry has consistently maintained that opening up the education sector to market forces would violate Supreme Court judgements and the country’s policy on education.